To judge by a summary review of the often lunatic discourse on the forums, President Hugo Chavez Frias is NOT held in very high esteem by the groupies who have failed to understand the President's sovereign right and elected duty to protect the best interests of the Venezuelan people (regardless of North Americans') or to take note of President Chavez' last January decision to consolidate/retake all of sovereign Venezuela's gold mining interests under his government's sovereign control

The message has, also, apparently, not yet sunk in that ... like stock exchange speculating USA-based Gold Reserve at Las Brisas del Cuyuni ... Crystallex doesn't have "a cat in hell's chance" of getting what it considers to be a key environmental permit to mine for gold under the terms of a mine-operating contract with the Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG).

Rabid rhetoric on the investor forums cite international arbitration (?) as a possible (far-flung!) resolution of their greed for gold ... they fondly believe that they decide what is right and what is wrong in Venezuela's domestic and economic politics, as if they had any control whatsoever over their own in the United States or in Canada. Fat chance! Even the groupies have to admit that its a toss-up between the company's eventual bankruptcy or years/decades waiting for an improbable end-result! Whichever way, the groupies' don't seem to understand the damage they are doing to their own interests (?) as the general portent of their inanities gets reported willy-nilly back to undeniably sensitive ears in Caracas who do not take assaults on their national pride lightly...

Realistically, one could scarcely blame any Venezuelan government official who chances to stumble across the stock forum cyber-bullies' plethora of illegal diatribes and vicious insults, to do anything else but to pull the plug (as they have done!) on Gold Reserve's fond ambitions of any commercial viability in Venezuela. The fact that they were not kicked out on their sorry asses earlier, is clear evidence of the Venezuelan administration's willingness to "get rid of the gringos" by all legal means at their disposal and to get whatever technical assistance, know-how, etc., etc., from elsewhere that is less arrogant and more readily disposed to work hand-in-hand with Venezuela to achieve common economic aims without having a fire sale on sovereignty.

When the final story is to be written of the tragi-comedy of the lust for Venezuelan gold, it will be no small surprise to learn of well-trodden manipulations and corruption that have littered Venezuela's gold mining history for most of the last hundred years and more. It should be no surprise that corruption was indeed endemic throughout the half-century of quasi-democracy that preceded President Hugo Chavez' democratic election to power in December 1998 ... OR of the wealth of manipulations and corruption that have continued through the eleven years since then.

Was Crystallex International's settlement with the Venezuelan government (in 1994), aided any by its association with ageing diplomat Enrique Tejera Paris and/or his "family connections" to Crystallex de Venezuela's legal and management team?

Was Crystallex International's purpose served any when they hired an executive who defected directly from the Ministry, but was hastily dropped when he was suspected to be well and truly "on the take"?

Scarcely!

As for Gold Reserve: It's scarcely any surprise that the Venezuelan government decided to drop the Spokane-based organization like a hot brick! For all the bravado and threats of international arbitration, claiming fantasy US$ billions in compensation, those GRZ executives who are directly concerned with the charade, know that they've already soaked Venezuela for all they're going to get ... no matter how many unreliable press releases they put out that often do not stand the test of closer scrutiny.

Crystallex has been caught up in the inevitable maelstrom ... but it's not entirely because of external conditionalities... The telling tale is that usually-communicative executives at Crystallex have been very much tongue-tied since way before last Christmas (2008). Does it mean that their "continuing conversations" with "senior government executives" will eventually pull them back form the knife's edge or have they been backed into a corner from which they see no possible face-saving exit? Only time will tell!

Yes, it was last November (2008) when the Venezuelan government and its Ministry of Basic Industries & Mines (Mibam) finally came to the conclusion that it had had enough and decided to parlay with more amenable Russians instead. The more public decision came off the back of Russian President Medvedev's visit to Venezuela with the Russian Navy in tow ... that incident in itself had caused major hiccups at the Pentagon where Cold War paranoia was still then at its fullest expression with "reds under the bed" unseen in every nook and cranny.

What is now fast becoming obvious, even to the blowhards on the shoddier and more reclusive "secret" investor forums, is that the Soviet Union is dead and gone!

Hey guys! If you're looking for "commies" look to USA's best friends and buddies in Beijing

The Berlin Wall has fallen ... Leningrad has now returned to its former status as St. Petersburg and Stalin is as best forgotten in history books as Adolf Hitler is to Germany's youth today!

McCarthy is dead! ...admittedly, Otto Reich is still alive!

To accuse Venezuela of becoming "communist" because of a rapprochement with the Russian Federation is just about as silly as it gets ... but that still doesn't deter the plethora of dyslectic twitterers that self-publish their lunacies in shadier corners of the Internet! Some people are so determined to believe the earth is flat, it's best to let them fall of the edge ...